


Eskhara

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [27]
Category: CSI, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You’ve got the four bedroom, three bath, loft house with the garage and the back yard. Put her in the mud room with the dog.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eskhara

**Title:** Eskhara  
 **Series:** [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/tag/sleeps%20with%20butterflies)  
 **Author:** vegawriters  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Pairing:** Grissom/Sara  
 **Timeframe:** Post _House of Hoarders_  
 **Rating:** Teen  
 **A/N:** This is part of the Sleeps with Butterflies series and holds all of the warnings associated with this series.  
 **Disclaimer:** I don’t own, don’t claim to own, although I wish I could have a hand in writing them. Seriously. Please don’t sue me. Hire me instead.

 **Summary:** _You’ve got the four bedroom, three bath, loft house with the garage and the back yard. Put her in the mud room with the dog.  
_

_This one had it coming, this one found a vein_  
This one was an accident, but never gave me pain  
This one was my father's, and this one you can't see  
This one had me scared to death  
But I guess I should be glad I'm not dead  
From : Made of Scars (Stone Sour)  


This time, the days Sara took had nothing to do with her husband.

It was an eight hour drive to San Francisco, but she still only stopped once to pee and once for a cup of coffee. At six o’clock, she pulled into the parking lot of the apartment building and waited for a while, watching. Even covered in salt and dirt, her Prius stood out among the broken pavement and rusty cars. She lit a cigarette and then another while she waited. Finally he emerged and as always, she flinched just a bit. It wasn’t his fault that he looked just like their father. Given her position, it was almost impossible for him to miss her, but she honked anyway and waved. He saw her and walked over, a smirk on his face.

“Sara.” Brian Sidle leaned against the frame of the car, “Surprised to see you here. What, felt like slumming?”

“Shut up, Brian.” She opened the door, pushing him back, and climbed out of the car. For a long time they stood eye-to-eye; her smoking, him reeking of stale booze and bad pot. Finally she tossed away the half-finished cigarette and ground it under her boot. “I drove by the half-way house.”

“Yeah, it got shut down.”

She rubbed her eyes, feeling the pinpricks of a headache poking into her skull. “I’m the contact. Why didn’t I know about this?”

“Because they contacted me and I figured if you needed to know, you’d find me. You’re the one who lives in Vegas. Or France. Or Peru. The last time they talked to you about her, you were out of the country. I’m the backup.” He sounded bitter. She didn’t care. She had a whole life full of bitter and for all she’d been willing to put behind her, there were some scars that just wouldn’t heal. “Maybe it was a stupid idea to let you become the emergency contact, anyway, Sara.”

“Maybe it was, if you can’t even leave a voicemail.” She wanted another cigarette. Instead she just run her hand through her hair and took off her sunglasses. “Where is she, Brian?”

He cocked his head. “Her case worker got her a place in a dump like this one. Get her off the meds and she’s pretty damned lucid.”

“Lucid enough to convince a judge she’s able to take care of herself?” Sara rubbed her eyes, silently cursing the problems in the social system. Coming to terms with her ghosts had been good for her mental health, but maybe staying estranged from her family would have been better in the long run. “Brian, you take her off the meds and she starts drinking and then it’s a problem for all of us.”

“You know, you could always take her home to Vegas. You’ve got the four bedroom, three bath, loft house with the garage and the back yard. Put her in the mud room with the dog.” He paused and shrugged his shoulders, “Sara, you have a life. Why do you even care?”

“Because blood stains never go away, Brian.” She sighed. “If we went back to that house, we’d still see Dad’s blood on the walls.”

“Let him lie there.” They stared at each other in silence for a while. Between them, the wounds were fresh and she knew he felt guilty for not protecting her.

“So why do you care?” She scrutinized him like she sized up suspects. They were the same height, but where she’d inherited their mother’s build and coloring, he was their father. Burly arms, broad shoulders, hands that made her flinch when he flexed them. “You could disappear into the wind and I’d never know anything.”

“Because I did that once, remember?” He shrugged. “You want to come inside?”

“Got anything burning in there that’ll make me fail my next drug screen?”

“Probably.”

She rolled her eyes and bit back the interrogatory questions about pot or meth. Given the state of his teeth, it was probably meth. “Get your wallet. I’ll take you to dinner.” He scuffed back into the apartment and she waited.

“How’s that husband of yours?” Brian asked as he came back over. He’d brushed his teeth and changed his shirt so he didn’t reek quite as badly. “You know, the one I don’t get to meet?”

“He’s fine and you haven’t met him because of his schedule.” She rolled her eyes and got back into the car. Brian followed suit. “How’s the trucker world?”

“Economy is in the crapper. How do you think it’s going?”

She shrugged and cut off her instant, sisterly need to help support him. That had been her and Gil’s line in the sand when she made contact again with her family. Of them, she was the successful one. It wouldn’t take much for them to come looking for a handout. No money exchanged hands and she never paid a dime in rent or utilities although she’d bought groceries and would pick up the tab for dinner. She was willing to make phone calls for them, willing to put in a good word, but she never co-signed applications or even paid with a credit card around them. Paranoid, yes. But it kept her boundaries firmly in place. “You hanging in there though?”

“Best I can. When I can work, the money is good.” He paused and she felt him looking at her. “How’s life with the PD?”

“Busy.” The stench of that house was still clinging to her skin. After a minute she gave her brother a break. “Really, it’s been good. I miss Gil, but that’s a natural state of affairs.”

Brian snorted. “You’re the idiot who thought long distance could work.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t working.” She rolled her eyes at her brother and pulled into a chain noodle place that she knew offered vegetarian options. “I said that it’s hard.” Glad for the distraction of moving from the car into the restaurant, Sara focused on the menu and getting a table and watching her brother order a beer to go along with dinner. He really was so much like their father in so many ways. She couldn’t help but wonder if that extended to his temper as well. Something told her it did.

Brian took his time speaking when he joined her at the table. “Mom’s really … she’s hanging in there, Sara.”

“She’s lucid though?” The last time she’d seen her mother, she’d been sitting on her bed at the halfway house, counting her individual strands of hair. It was hard to imagine her aware enough of herself to walk into a liquor store and buy booze.

“Comes and goes. I hear from her when she is.” Brian shrugged. “And when she lucid, she’s drunk.”

“There are times I think she never should have been paroled. She’s a danger to herself.”

“Even schizophrenic child-abusing murderers deserve parole, Sara. Or isn’t that what the code of law is all about?”

She bristled. What the hell did he know about anything? “The code of law is that it is better that one thousand guilty go free rather than arrest one innocent person. But mom isn’t innocent.”

“She’s schizophrenic. And a drunk.” Brian sounded resigned and that only pissed her off more.

“It doesn’t change what she did. Not to Dad and not to me.”

“Like you wanted Dad to keep slapping us around?”

“No!” She sighed. “No. But …”

“Sara, you have to deal with life as it is right now.” His voice dropped a notch and she relented her anger to listen. “Mom isn’t taking her medications and her social worker doesn’t check in every day.” He paused. “Hey, did you bring Gil up to see her once?”

“Yeah.”

“She remembers that, you know. She talks about it like it was a dream though.”

“She was pretty out of it that day.” Sara fell silent while the food was dropped off. She thanked the server with a smile and stared into the red water glass on the table in front of her. “She’s always been pretty out of it.”

“She can’t help it, Sara.”

Sara just shrugged. There was a fine line between what mental health issues did to a person and an inability to take responsibility for ones actions. Her mother walked that line like she was an acrobat at a circus she’d created for her family to watch. It was so easy to brush off the alcoholism as a reason for what was wrong. But there was so much more at work and if Laura would stay off the booze, her doctors could really determine what meds were best for her.

They fell silent as they ate and Sara let her mind wander. It was easier than actually dealing with what brought her out here. She could have boarded a plane and flown to her cocoon of security. Gil would hold her and keep the wolves from even approaching the door. Instead here she was, staring at her big brother, wondering just how much of a leap it was for either of them to snap.

“I should see mom,” she said, pushing her noodles around in the bowl. “It’s why I’m here.”

“Yeah.” Brian nodded. “She’ll want to see you.”

Sara glanced down at her hand, at the tell-tale scars. The one on her middle finger was from when she’d cut herself picking up the broken glass from one of her father’s beer bottles. The three prong marks in her thumb had been from when her mother had sworn it was Sara who was telling the voices to kill. The one on her palm was from the night before her mother had killed her father. Sara had burned dinner and her punishment had been a second degree blister that ended up getting infected while she was in the children’s shelter. She knew each and every scar.

Life moved on, but that didn’t mean she forgot. Like she’d told Ray, the scars were a part of her. They didn’t make her who she was. And so she sighed and flexed her hand and took a sip of her water. “Where’s mom living now?”

“This rundown hell hole near the beach. Not too far from the halfway house, really. It’s one of the few areas they haven’t gentrified yet down there.” He gave her the address and she filed it away, cursing her memory. Just once she’d like to forget something. He pushed his plate away and Sara realized she had barely touched her food. It was cold now, the grease from the fryers congealing in the noodles and she gagged a bit. It was okay. She wasn’t that hungry anyway. “You didn’t eat, Sara.”

She shrugged. “Other things on my mind.” The restaurant was suddenly crowded and she needed to get out. Without checking to see if Brian had finished his beer, she fled to her car, waiting for him to catch up. A few minutes later he emerged and she drove him back to his apartment in silence.

“Brian …” she sighed as she pulled into the slot in front of his door. “Get off the drugs, okay?”

He shrugged. “It’s just for fun, Sara.”

“I’m not seeing a party right now.” They stared at each other for a long time before Brian opened the door and stepped out of the car.

“Take care of yourself, Sara,” he said. “And call me when you’re done with Mom.” The door slammed and Sara waited until he was inside his apartment before driving off.

The building wasn’t hard to find. A converted weekly-stay motel; faded brown bricks gave way to thin brown doors and broken chairs in front of most apartments. Three kids, no older than six, played on a small patch of lawn in front of what Sara assumed was the leasing office. The few cars were all similar to the ones at Brian’s place – old, faded, rusted. There was a reasonably well-cared for Ford and a new-looking Elantra. In front of the door to number six sat a woman. She had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her skin was sallow, her cheeks sunken, and her hair thin and torn at the ends. Her shirt was stained and there were rips in her jeans. A new bruise purpled above her eye.

Sara almost turned around, but she’d come up for a reason. Being in that house, holding Mrs. Santiago’s hand, she’d remembered why she’d sought out her mother in the first place. Unlike in video games, ghosts didn’t stop chasing you no matter how far you ran. She couldn’t save her mother, but she could help soften the fall. Pocketing her cigarettes, Sara turned off the car and stepped out, trying to control her nerves. It had been a while since she had a lucid conversation with her mother.

“Hi, Mom,” Sara said once she was in ear shot.

Laura blinked and tilted her head, looking up at Sara like a cat looked up at a perch. A dark smile spread across her face but never touched her lips. “You’re my daughter.” Her speech was slow, careful. “You here to arrest me?”

Sara sighed and crouched down to her mother’s level. “No, Mom. I just drove up to say hi.” A man emerged from the apartment. He stared at Sara and then walked away without saying a word. Instinct told her that inside, she’d find some cash on the nightstand and, hopefully, a used condom in the trash. A small part of her rejoiced. If her mother was turning tricks, maybe she’d get caught and locked up for good. But cops went after the hookers who worked the streets, not the older women exchanging sex with fellow users, putting out for twenty bucks so they could supply their habit. “Can I see your new place?”

Laura stood on unsteady legs and tripped her way back into the converted apartment. It was a studio, decked out with a bed and a kitchenette with a hot plate that had to be out of code. It smelled of beer and cigarettes and Sara didn’t see any drug paraphernalia in plain sight. Not that it meant anything. A business card was attached to the fridge with a magnet, a time for the next appointment with the case worker written in red sharpie. There was twenty bucks on the bedside table. Laura collapsed into a chair and tucked her legs up under her. Sara checked the fridge. No food. Expired orange juice. A new six pack of Natural Light. “Hey Mom, do you want to go to the store?” She wouldn’t give her mother money for food, but there was twenty bucks on the bedside table.

“Nah. It’s okay.” Laura rubbed her face and dropped the mostly empty beer can. It spilled and Sara searched for a roll of paper towels. There weren’t any. Suddenly she wasn’t sure which was worse, a life where the memories couldn’t be sorted through and came down upon you in sewing machines and boxes of rat poison and Christmas ribbon, or a life where there was nothing left to document, not even paper towels to clean up a mess. She walked out to her car, grabbed the roll she kept in the trunk, and spent ten minutes wiping down the surfaces in the room. Her mother just counted ceiling tiles and bubbles in the air and anything else that caught her attention.

Why was she here again?

Oh, that’s right. Because she was tired of running from her ghosts. So instead, she hunted them down, faced them, and cleaned up after them.

The paper towel in her hand was black and she tossed it into the unlined trash can. Two fruit flies buzzed up and out and for a moment, Sara stared at them. What would Gil say about the bugs? At night, did roaches crawl over her mother or was this place more of a spiders and ants kind of dive? While her mother wandered to the fridge for another beer, Sara checked the closet. The clothes were all on the floor save for a stained white t-shirt which was hung over the crossbar. On the top shelf was a shoebox and the doll Laura had been holding the day she’d introduced her mother to Gil.

Her investigation complete, Sara sat in the other chair. No way in hell was she sitting on her mother’s unmade, freshly prostituted bed. At least the scent of tobacco covered the smell of sex. But sitting still gave her nothing to do. Talking to her mother was nearly impossible, and Sara realized she’d driven up not to check on the family but to clear her mind of the newest set of demons. Maybe it was a good thing she and Gil were having a hell of a time getting pregnant. She wouldn’t want her mother within two states of her child and Brian was a good man, but he was just so messed up. What would have happened if she could have kept Elise? What kind of life would her daughter have had?

“You look tired.”

Sara blinked and looked at her mother. Laura had stopped mumbling and counting to herself and suddenly, it was one of those moments, a moment where they could connect. So she shrugged. “Work keeps me busy, Mom.”

“Too busy to see me.” The words were low and Sara bit back the guilt. She wasn’t guilty. She didn’t feel guilty. But the look in her mother’s eyes made her wish she could do more. She also wished she’d never reopened these wounds.

“No, Mom. I’m just busy.” She glanced around the room again, wanting to actually do something and not just sit and talk. “Come on, let’s take that money you have there and go to the store? You need something in your fridge.”

“I’m okay, Sara.” It was the most lucid her mother had sounded in a long time and Sara froze. “I’m okay. Stop trying to fix me.”

Sara watched her mother take another sip of the beer in her hand and when she lowered the can, the glazed look was back in her eyes. Laura stood up and wandered over to the bed and collapsed down, and again, beer spilled. This time, Sara didn’t bother cleaning it up. She walked outside, leaving the door slightly ajar, and sat down on the step. First, she called a nearby motel and made a reservation for the night. Then, lit a cigarette and texted her husband. Until her mother slept it off, there wasn’t much more she could do.

_Continued in_ [Confessional](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/64465.html)


End file.
